Chapter 24 #2
I didn’t answer. I used my tongue, then my teeth, light enough to make him arch. His cock filled against his briefs, thick and obvious beneath the fabric. I palmed him there, slow pressure, watching his abdomen tighten.
“You’re sensitive in the morning,” I said.
“Apparently.”
I dragged his briefs down. His cock sprang free, flushed and hard against his stomach. I wrapped my hand around him and stroked once from base to tip.
His head tipped back. “Fuck.”
I took my time because I wanted the memory burned into him. My mouth on his chest. My hand on his cock. My fingers rolling his balls gently while he tried not to thrust. He was beautiful like this, not polished, not performing, just wrecked open by pleasure and trust.
I kissed down his stomach.
He lifted his head. “You don’t have to.”
I looked up at him. “I know.”
Then I took him into my mouth.
His whole body jerked.
I held his hips down with one forearm and worked him deeper, learning him by taste and sound. The salt of skin. The smooth heat of the head against my tongue. The way his thighs trembled when I sucked harder on the upstroke. His hands hovered, uncertain, so I reached up and put one in my hair.
“Hold on,” I said.
He did.
I took him again, slower now, letting him feel every inch. His breathing turned ragged. When I cupped his balls and drew one gently into my mouth, he cursed so sharply Tiny lifted his head from the floor.
“Sorry,” Jace gasped, then lost the apology when I licked back up his shaft.
I slid one hand beneath his thigh and pushed his leg wider.
He looked down at me, pupils blown. “Yeah?”
“Color.”
“Green.”
I kissed the inside of his thigh, then lower. My fingers found him, warm and tight, and circled without entering. His body clenched immediately.
“Breathe,” I murmured.
He tried. Failed. Tried again.
I took his cock back into my mouth while my finger kept circling him. His hips twitched against my hold. The first time I pressed firmer, his hand tightened in my hair.
“Jesus. That feels... I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know.”
I slicked my finger with spit, returned to him, and traced the rim until his muscles started to give. Not much. Enough.
“Please,” he said, shocked by his own voice.
I lifted my mouth from his cock. “Please what?”
His face flushed. “Don’t make me say it.”
“I need to hear you ask.”
His chest rose and fell hard. “Push in.”
I went still for one breath, giving him a chance to take it back.
He didn’t.
I pressed inside slowly.
His mouth fell open, no sound at first. His body went tense, then confused, then hungry all at once.
“Easy,” I said. “You’re taking it.”
“That’s so fucking weird.”
I laughed low against his hip. “Still green?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
I worked him open with patience I barely had, curling my finger carefully, watching every reaction. When I brushed the spot inside him, his back came off the mattress.
“What the hell is that?”
“There,” I said, rubbing again.
He made a sound I had never heard from him, stunned and desperate. “Do that again.”
I did, and took his cock back into my mouth at the same time.
He came apart fast after that. Not polished.
Not controlled. His hand locked in my hair, his thighs shaking around my shoulders while I sucked him deep and rubbed that spot inside him until he couldn’t form words.
His orgasm hit with a broken shout, hot and thick on my tongue.
I swallowed him down, holding him through every pulse while his body jerked under me.
When he finally sagged, wrecked and panting, I pulled my finger free gently and kissed his thigh.
Then I moved up over him.
His eyes opened, dazed. He looked at my mouth, my beard, my body above his. I was so hard it hurt. I pushed my briefs down enough to free myself and wrapped my hand around my cock.
Jace watched, breathing shallow.
I stroked fast, rougher than I meant to, the sight of him beneath me stripping away the last of my restraint.
His chest was flushed. His cock softening against his stomach.
His lips parted. Mine, some vicious part of me thought, not as a phrase to say, not as a claim he had consented to carry in public, but as instinct.
As hunger. As the mark I could leave because the world had no space for the truth yet.
I came over him with a low groan, spilling across his chest in hot streaks. His breath caught as the first pulse hit his skin. I braced one hand beside his head and kept stroking until I was empty, until he was marked with me and watching me like it meant something neither of us could say safely.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then Tiny sneezed from the floor.
Jace blinked.
I dropped my forehead to his shoulder and laughed, quiet and helpless.
“That dog has terrible timing,” he said, voice rough.
“He thinks the same about you.”
I got a warm cloth from the bathroom and cleaned him carefully. He let me, eyes half closed, fingers brushing my wrist once as if checking I was still there. I cleaned myself, tossed the cloth aside, and got back into bed.
Jace turned toward me immediately.
I pulled him in.
The room was still gray. Morning waited beyond the curtains. Practice, calls, consequences, Olivia, Roman, all of it. None of it had disappeared because Jace slept in my bed or came in my mouth or wore me on his skin for a few seconds before I wiped him clean.
“I have to talk to Olivia,” I said.
Jace’s body tightened, but he didn’t pull away. “I know.”
“Soon.”
“I know.”
I pressed my hand between his shoulder blades. “And you have to talk to Roman.”
“Yeah.”
Tiny stood, stretched with a groan, then heaved himself onto the bed without permission. The mattress dipped hard. Jace made an offended noise as a hundred plus pounds of dog wedged against his legs.
“No boundaries in this house?” Jace asked.
“None that he respects.”
Tiny rested his chin on Jace’s shin and sighed, pleased with himself.
Jace looked at him, then at me. The guilt was still there in his eyes. So was the fear. But under it, something steadier had taken root.
“I don’t regret coming here,” he said.
My chest tightened.
“You may later.”
“Maybe.” His fingers found mine under the blanket. “Not this morning.”
I held his hand and let that be enough for the hour we had.
Outside, the day kept arriving. Inside, he stayed. And for the first time in years, my house felt less like a place I maintained and more like a place where someone had finally come home, even if neither of us had earned the right to call it that yet.